Lead poisoning seen as probable cause of Beethoven illnesses

From staff and wire reports

NAPERVILLE, Illinois -- Lead poisoning may have caused years of chronic illness in composer Ludwig van Beethoven and may have contributed to his death, according to a team of researchers.

Chemical analysis experts found unusually high levels of lead in eight strands of Beethoven's hair, said project director William Walsh, Ph.D., chief scientist of the Health Research Institute in Naperville, Illinois. The concentrations were 100 times the levels of lead commonly found in people today.

There has been much speculation about the cause of the composer's poor health ever since his death in 1827 at the age of 57.

"Independent analyses of Beethoven's hair show that he had plumbism, or lead poisoning, which could explain his lifelong illnesses. It would also have had an impact on his personality and could have contributed to his death," said Walsh.

Background: How the hair made its way to the researchers is the subject of a new book by Russell Martin, "Beethoven's Hair," being released this week. Ferdinand Hiller, a young musician, clipped it from the composer the day after he died. It passed from generation to generation of Hillers, then to Kay Fremming, a Danish physician. It's believed that Fremming was given the hair in gratitude for his work to save Jews in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Fremming's daughter sold the hair through Sotheby's following her father's death.   RESOURCES Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies

"Beethoven saw physician after physician in search of a cure for his physical ailments," explained Walsh. "He suffered from bad digestion, chronic abdominal pain, irritability and depression."

Walsh, a nationally known expert in hair and chemical analyses, was recruited for the project by U.S. Beethoven enthusiasts Ira Brilliant and Alfredo Guevara. They purchased the strands of Beethoven's hair in 1994 for $7,300 through Sotheby's in London, England. Walsh performed the analysis with the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois.

In the project, Walsh looked for distinctive trace-metal patterns associated with genius, irritability, glucose disorders and malabsorption, but discovered that they were not present in the Beethoven samples. He also looked for signs of mercury, which would have suggested that the composer had been treated for syphilis, which some Beethoven scholars had suspected he contracted. None was found.

Walsh doubts that the poisoning led to Beethoven's deafness.

"(Lead poisoning) does cause some neurological problems, but it's almost always in the extremities, in the arms and legs primarily. There have been a couple of cases of deafness caused by lead poisoning but it's very rare, so I think it's a long shot," said Walsh, who added that research continues in that area.

William Walsh led a team of scientists whose studies of Ludwig van Beethoven's hair suggest the composer had lead poisoning

"That's really the million-dollar question," said William Meredith, director of the Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California.

Scientists at the Health Research Institute said that Beethoven's lead exposure came as an adult.

"He could not have gotten it as a child. Children who get lead ... usually get intellectual deficits -- it affects their learning ability. However, adults often attain their full intelligence. They have this unremitting abdominal distress, pain and nausea, that sort of thing," explained Walsh, who said the source of the lead remains unclear.

The lead contamination could have come from the composer's drinking water, his food or utensils, but "wherever it came from, it must have been a lot more than most of the people in that area because his illness was quite dramatic -- he went to 20 or 30 doctors trying to solve this awful problem," said Walsh.

Beethoven wrote a letter to his brothers in 1802 asking them to have doctors find the cause of his abdominal pain after his death.

"We feel that we're fulfilling part of his wishes, albeit 199 years later," Walsh said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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